With the motivational zeal of a personal trainer, Davis is prodding
the 7th graders at Walsh Middle School in this Boston suburb to take a
hard look at their weekly media intake.

As if making a confession in a self-help group, 12-year-old Manny
Ortega admits to logging 40 hours each week in front of a television
set. One of the other two dozen students in this health class says he's
accrued 36 hours of tube time in the past seven days. The class average
is 20 hours of television viewing a week. The goal, Davis says, is no
more than 14.

Most of these preteens, gesturing to the snow-caked sidewalks
outside their school building, blame the recent ice storm that blew
through New England for their sedentary ways; the rest shrug and say
they can't think of anything better to do.

Into that mental void, Davis throws his pitch: "How about cleaning
your room? Walking the dog? Any activity is better than none!"

Davis emphasizes that he isn't asking his students--of varying
weights and athletic abilities--to leap from coach potato to track
star. He just wants to keep them moving.

This isn't Diet 101, but it may as well be. The Harvard
University-developed curriculum that this middle school is using is the
only published school-based program that has had a documented effect on
reducing obesity in children, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Harvard University school of public health will
release the results next month of a study in which they followed 1,295
6th and 7th graders at Walsh and nine other ethnically diverse
Boston-area schools from fall 1995 to fall 1997. The Atlanta-based U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has reviewed the
researchers' findings, has found them promising.

Early results show that after two years of using the Planet Health
curriculum, which focuses on improving eating habits and increasing
activity, students reported that they cut television viewing by an
average of 4.2 hours a week. And the girls in schools using Planet
Health were 5 percent less likely than those not exposed to the program
to become obese in the two years the study was conducted, the
researchers found. The research team concluded that the curriculum had
a greater effect on girls than on boys--who showed no significant
reduction in their obesity rate--because adolescent girls tend to be
more focused on body image and weight loss than their male classmates
are.

Students were considered obese if both their weight-for-height
measurements and a skinfold-thickness test--essentially a pinch under
their triceps--were at or above the 85th percentile for all children of
the same age and gender.

In the world of behavior-change research, where a change as low as 2
percent is deemed significant, national experts say those results are
impressive.

Davis is optimistic. "Ten years ago, smoking was high. Now we don't
smoke in restaurants anymore. Why did this happen? It happened because
of education," he says.

One in five children in the United States is obese as defined by the
same weight-for-height measurement used in the Planet Health
curriculum, national health statistics show. The childhood-obesity rate
leaped from 14 percent in 1976 to 22 percent in 1991. Blacks and
Hispanics, as well as children from low-income families, tend to have
higher rates of obesity than their white and more affluent peers. In
particular, a study released last month showed, the percentage of poor
preschoolers who are obese has climbed in the past decade; in 1995,
10.2 percent of children under age 5 were obese, up from 8.5 percent in
1983.

Obesity is associated with a range of serious health problems,
including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and some cancers.

Genetics may explain why a small percentage of obese people have
more difficulty shedding unwanted pounds. Researchers recently have
found that two out of 1,000 people in the United States who lack
leptin, a protein released by fat cells that regulates appetite, have a
genetic predisposition to become overweight.

Finding a genetic link to being overweight may help the public
understand obesity as a health issue as opposed to a purely cosmetic
one, says Bill Dietz, the director of the division of nutrition and
physical activity for the CDC.

But even with the discovery of a genetic predisposition in some
people, he says, the increase in the percentage of overweight children
in the United States is more culturally than biologically driven.

Experts say American children are getting plumper because of several
factors: Children are increasingly left to regulate their own
television viewing in the after-school hours, junk food is easily
available, and the current generation of young people tends to be less
physically active than earlier ones. Children in poor families are more
at risk for becoming overweight in part because the least expensive
option for dining out--fast-food restaurants--is often the most laden
with calories.

A national survey published last March in the Journal of the
American Medical Association found that 80 percent of children ages
8 to 16 were physically active--defined by sweating and hard
breathing--three or more times a week; federal health officials
recommend at least 30 minutes of daily exercise. The survey also
reports that 67 percent of all children in the United States watch at
least two hours of television each day; 26 percent watch four hours
daily.

Despite the increase in obesity among young people, weight-loss
companies have not aggressively marketed their products to children.
Adults--of whom 33 percent are overweight--flock to Jenny Craig and
Weight Watchers, which have counseling and support groups. Children are
targeted by only a handful of pricey summer camps that promise to help
them lose weight. And while these specialized camps, with their
full-time nutritionists and personal trainers, may be helpful for some
children, experts on obesity doubt that a short course has the staying
power to change diet and exercise habits in the long run.

That's where Planet Health comes in, says Jean Wiecha, the project
director of the Harvard Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and
Physical Activity and the co-author of the curriculum. Wiecha says
schools don't need to, and shouldn't, become weight-loss centers.

But the Planet Health study shows that schools can be ideal venues
for modifying student behavior because they have a captive audience for
a long stretch of time.

Wiecha hopes that by sprinkling messages to students in classes
throughout the day, the Planet Health philosophy will sink in.

This snack-saturated culture is one reason why America leads the
developed world in childhood obesity.

For George Baccus, a math teacher at Morse Elementary School in
Cambridge, Mass., which is one of the schools trying out the
curriculum, it was just another geometry lesson.

As part of a Planet Health unit, students spent a few days
calculating and comparing the fat, carbohydrate, and protein content of
low-fat chocolate milk and whole milk. (Chocolate milk, they
discovered, is 5.3 times fattier). The next week, the students polled
their fellow 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to find out how much television
they watched each week. They made colorful pie charts to display the
results.

Baccus hopes the posted wall charts will have shock value: The
student survey showed that 59 percent of 6th graders reported watching
four hours of television a day (double the national average for
children); only 5 percent watched one hour or less.

Across the hall in Karen Spaulding's 6th grade science class,
students are talking about snack-food advertisements in a nutrition
lesson. The CDC estimates that some 13,000 new food products--many of
them sweet snacks--tumble onto supermarket shelves each year. When
asked to repeat advertising slogans, the students don't hesitate:
"Sprite: Obey your thirst." "Skittles: Taste the rainbow." "Snickers:
Hungry? Why wait?" "Pringles: Once you pop the top, you can't
stop."

Such commercial spots with catchy slogans don't talk about fat
content, calories, or nutrients. "They push taste," says Spaulding, who
then directs her students to compare the nutritional information of
various snack foods. "How many calories are you really getting in a
'reduced fat' Snackwell chocolate sandwich cookie?" the teacher
asks.

"It's 200 calories for one serving!" yells 12-year-old Jean Olenick.
"If that's reduced fat, I'd like to see the fatty kind," she says.

Serving sizes are often deceptively small, Spaulding warns the
adolescents. "Ice cream labels base information on a one-half-cup
serving size. That's barely one scoop. I usually have four when I eat
ice cream. I don't know about you ... "

This snack-saturated culture is one reason why America leads the
developed world in childhood obesity, says Peter N. Stearns, a
professor of social history at Carnegie Mellon University. Stearns is
the author of Fat History , a book that compares American eating
habits with those of the French. In France, which has the thinnest
population in the Western world, children are discouraged from eating
between meals, and their lunches and dinners--while they may be
lathered in fatty sauces--come in much smaller portions than Americans
typically eat.

Americans' penchant for heaping plates is deeply rooted in this
country's national identity as the land of plenty, Stearns says. Since
the first Thanksgiving, Americans have seen large portions as a sign of
wealth. And making sure children ate all the food on their plates was
long considered a significant test of good parenting, Stearns notes.
Eating large meals didn't matter in the 18th century, when people did a
great deal of physical labor, he says, "but we should have reduced the
portions when we stopped pushing the plow."

Part of the reason for Americans' culinary excess is convenience,
the CDC's Dietz says.

While it now may take two working parents to put food on the table,
the breadwinners often aren't the ones doing the cooking. Americans eat
out more than people in other countries; families now spend 35 percent
of their food money on meals outside the home, which means children and
adults have less control over the quality and quantity of the food they
consume, Dietz points out.

"The opportunity to eat garbage has increased because everyone is
eating on the run," adds Brenda Greene, the school health coordinator
for the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. Add to
that the fact that as many as 14 percent of high school students in the
United States skip breakfast--even when they qualify for the meal free
through the school breakfast program. And children who are hungry tend
to gorge on snacks, Greene says.

Considering these cultural trends and time constraints, it helps for
students to have a role model, Mary Ann Cusack argues. A veteran
English teacher at Morse, Cusack has taken the Planet Health curriculum
to heart.

During the two years that Cusack taught units on a balanced diet and
regular cardiovascular exercise to her 7th and 8th graders as part of
the Harvard study, the 5-foot-5-inch teacher dropped 70 pounds
herself.

"If I tried to teach this as a 200-pound person, I would be
embarrassed. It would be hypocritical," says the 40-something Cusack.
"Before, I didn't exercise. Now, I can bench-press 55 pounds, and kids
ask what I eat for lunch."

But Cusack says it's hard to make classroom lessons stick when they
aren't consistently applied.

Since the federal government changed the dietary guidelines to trim
the fat content in school lunches in 1994, districts nationwide have
devised menus with more nutritious, leaner meals. And the 5,500-student
Cambridge school district just hired a new food-services director to
spice up and slim down its school meals.

But, at the same time school lunches are going on a health kick,
fast food is moving onto campus. One school in the 7,500-student
Framingham district plans to open a McDonald's or other fast-food
restaurant on-site soon. Cusack says it's hard to preach healthful
eating habits when the "golden arches" are going up next door.

While teachers like Cusack rail against the incursion of fast-food
chains, Robert McGowan, the lead physical education teacher at Morse,
is pushing the other part of the Planet Health regimen.

"Get your arms up. Energy!" McGowan yells to the two dozen
kindergartners wildly flailing spaghetti-like cords in their first
foray into jumping rope last month. As the 5-year-olds giggle and fall
in heaps, McGowan laughs and says, "Just wait for the Hula Hoop
lesson."

Many districts are looking to federal grant money to expand
after-school physical activities for students.

McGowan estimates that about 20 percent of students in the 265-student
K-8 school are overweight--about the national average. But it was an
extremely heavy 9-year-old in his PE class who was reluctant to
participate in school sports that inspired McGowan to make obesity
prevention his mission. He is even writing a doctoral thesis on the
subject of childhood obesity.

"I've had kids who were overweight before, but nothing that
drastic," says McGowan, who still keeps tabs on some of the students
who were in the study and are now in high school. McGowan says he
hasn't seen a major change among the overweight students since Planet
Health was in place, but he doesn't expect things to turn around
overnight.

He would like to have more fitness options for students--especially
for girls, who have fewer team sports than boys do--but as usual it's a
matter of finances.

"The biggest thing is money," says McGowan, standing in room bulging
with basketballs and wall-climbing apparatus. Greatly expanding the
district's physical education program is difficult in a climate of
school budgets that are tailored to the academic basics.

Last year, Massachusetts slashed the K-12 PE requirement, allowing
schools to offer as little as one class a week. McGowan says the
Cambridge schools require more than the minimum--at two 45-minute PE
periods a week--but just barely.

The situation is not unique to Massachusetts, says Paula Keyes Kun,
a spokeswoman for the National Association for Sports and Physical
Education in Reston, Va. Only one state, Illinois, requires daily
physical education for K-12 students, and districts nationwide are
increasingly allowing marching band and other activities to substitute
for PE, she says.

Greene of the NSBA says she's troubled when schools preach one thing
in the classroom and another in the gym or the cafeteria.
Standards-based reforms are putting more pressure on schools to perform
academically, she says, while preventing obesity--though seen as a
laudable goal--is rarely a pressing concern. Teachers in Massachusetts
are focusing these days on preparing students for rigorous assessments
that many students flunked last year.

"Schools have a lot on their plate when they make financial
decisions. If schools don't see health as integral to their educational
mission, they are going to give it a low priority," Greene says.

Many districts are looking to federal grant money to expand
after-school physical activities for students.

If Jim Coady, the principal at Morse, had his way, the school would
be open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and have fitness services that
rivaled those of the YMCA. Students need more organized sports
activities during and after school, he says.

"I grew up in East Cambridge when most of the people worked in soap,
candy, and rubber factories, and we kids lived at the
playground. It was always filled. I don't see that anymore," Coady
says.

"Nowadays, parents are terrified to send kids out" to play, adds
Howell Wexler, a spokesman for the CDC's division of adolescent and
school health. "They say, 'Yeah it's terrible to let kids watch TV, but
at least there aren't bullets falling down on them.' "

On top of crime concerns is the New England cold, some Cambridge
parents say. "It's hard for the kids to get out in this weather," says
Laura Levins, who drove to Morse on a recent icy day to pick up her
children. "There's a park across the street from us, but it's covered
in snow."

As Coady watches the phalanx of cars, minivans, and school buses
pack into the ice-lined parking lot at the end of the school day, he
says it's ultimately up to parents to make fitness a priority for their
children.

Davis, the health teacher at the 900-student Walsh Middle School,
agrees that prodding his class to exercise more is practically
worthless unless the students are nudged by parents or peers.

Gail McNeill, at home in Framingham one day last month, says she's
pleased to help her son, Gregory, with his homework assignment for
health class.

"I think I'll cut out 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' and 'Sister,
Sister,' " says Gregory, a freckled 13-year-old, who says he usually
watches sitcoms from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. His mother, a veterinarian, says
that her son, though stocky, is at a normal weight for his prepubescent
stage, but Gregory says he wouldn't mind "being a little skinnier."

Gregory says his goals are to "start working in the little gym in
our garage and riding my bike around the [banks of the nearby]
reservoir" when the winter ice finally thaws.

Thirteen-year-old Julianna Sokolova, a tall, thin student sitting in
Davis' health class at Walsh last month, says she belongs to a fitness
club and regularly works out there after school. Besides aerobics, she
swims, uses weights, and even does sit-ups while talking to friends on
the phone. "It sort of became an obsession," the teenager says on a
recent day after school.

Maura Overlan, a social worker at Walsh, says Julianna's
preoccupation with thinness is typical of teenage girls who devour
glamour magazines that idealize slender supermodels.

On a recent day after school, Samantha Anderson is curled up in a
recliner in the downstairs recreation room at home. It's too icy to
sled, so she's clicking between "Rocko's Modern Life," a cable
favorite, and a "Superman" cartoon. "When I watch TV, I usually get
cookies or ice cream if we have it," the 12-year-old says. Today, she's
eating popcorn.

Her mother, Marjie Anderson, is upstairs making spaghetti for
dinner. "Poor girl. She's got bad genetics. We could all stand to lose
20 pounds," she says.

"We eat junk food every day. And when I'm not paying attention, the
default is TV. I don't want to nag, but we all need to do more as a
family," Anderson, a stay-at-home mom, says.

Anderson says she likes the Planet Health course because it teaches
children to think about how to manage their time productively. The
mother of two also likes the fact that Samantha's health homework in
Davis' class dovetails with her daughter's household obligations.

A diligent student who mostly makes A's or B's, Samantha is reminded
by her mother that she gets fitness points in health class for folding
her crocheted bedspread and for tucking her 83 Beanie Babies into a
wicker basket. So Samantha clicks off the afternoon shows and heads
upstairs to clean her room.

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